The British Broadcasting Corporation Ltd (BBC), likes to distance itself from the tv licence; though it is the television licensing authority in the UK.
To maintain this distance, the BBC, have concocted "TV Licensing". "TV Licensing" is a trademarked umbrella trading name under the cover of which various contractors under the BBC "TV Licensing" contract operate.

Friday, 28 March 2014

" . . . I have initially made enquiries of the BBC TV Licensing Management Team, and have confirmed that no one within the BBC holds material relating to the induction and training provided to all categories of TV Licensing visiting parties and visiting officers.
As these individuals are employed by Capita, their induction and training is primarily an internal matter for Capita.

Capita has no obligation to - nor does the BBC ask Capita to – advise it of these matters. . . "

Really?

Quote from a BBC Freedom of Information Response:

“Please note that “TV Licensing” is a trade mark used by companies contracted by the BBC to administer the collection of television licence fees and enforcement of the television licensing system. The majority of the administration of TV Licensing is contracted to Capita Business Services Ltd (‘Capita’). Over-the-counter services are provided by PayPoint plc (‘PayPoint’) in the UK, and by the Post Office in the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. Marketing and printing services are contracted to Proximity London Ltd. Media services are contracted to Mediaedge:CIA International Limited ("MEC"). The BBC is a public authority in respect of its television licensing functions and retains overall responsibility.”

Really?

A Service Provision Agreement for the adminstration and enforcement of the BBC TV Licence exists between the BBC and Capita Business Services. Hard to believe isn't it?

Please make a very careful note that the BBC ask no questions about Capita BBC TV Licensing™'s methods.

TV Licensing Watch hope that is very clear to everyone.

If you had such a Service Provision Agreement with someone, wouldn't you want to know everything that is being done in your name?

If you had such a Service Provision Agreement with someone, wouldn't you need to know everything that is being done in your name?

Not the BBC apparently.

"Ignorance is no excuse", used to be a favourite put down issued by those in authority. Especially applicable when ignorance is a deliberate act, BBC.

The value of domestic cctv surveillance and handheld video camera can prove invaluable in gathering evidence of the serial abuses and misdemeanours perpetrated by employees of Capita Business Services under cover of the BBC TV Licensing™ contract. TV Licensing Watch advises anybody who has the misfortune to have face to face dealings with Capita Business Services TV Licensing™ to make an audio-visual record of those dealings in their entirety covertly or overtly with cctv and handheld video cameras.

For people who have not exercised their right to remain silent, TV Licensing Watch advise anybody who has had the misfortune to have face to face dealings with Capita Business Services TV Licensing™ and have received a summons as a consequence to contact a licensed law practitioner if: there is the slightest discrepancy between the actual situation regarding viewing habits and/or what actually happened during the interview compared with what has been written on the TVL178 Record of Interview self incrimination form.

Thursday, 20 March 2014

This blogpost was originally going to be about an incident on 8 March 2014 in Stoke On Trent involving the deployment of a fabled “detector van”. However, while writing the original draft we realised that the deployment of these so called “detector vans” raised so many other issues at so many levels that we really had trouble knowing just where to begin and end.

TV Licensing Blog posted a very concise and informative blogpost about the incident so we feel no need to repeat it in our blog. So back to “detector vans”. No thanks to the BBC and its PR hangers on “detector vans” have become part of the urban mythology of the UK. So desperate are the BBC to keep the population of the UK in a permanent state of fear that it is still common for the local press to publish advertorials propagandising the “detector van” urban myth. These advertorials are placed by PR companies on behalf of the BBC doubtless in the hope that doing so maintains and even boosts tv licence sales. An interesting collation of information about “detector vans” is available courtesy of BBC TV Licence.

Headlines that begin “Detector vans catch . . . “ precede advertorials that are aimed at sanitising and making credible BBC surveillance activities that are politically and socially insanitary and considerably less than credible. Capita BBC TV Licensing™, trademark bastard corporate offspring of the BBC and Capita Business Services is the TV Licensing™ contractor which deploys “detector vans” for and on behalf of the BBC. Realising that its TV Licensing™ enforcement obligations are fantastically unpopular with the general public the BBC’s policy is to deliberately put as much distance between itself anything enforcement that is done in its name by its TV Licensing™ trademark. Hence the creation of both the trademark and Capita BBC TV Licensing™. Everything is kept conveniently remote. A model of “arms length management” and “hands off management”.

Until the deployment of the “detector van” involved in the unpleasant incident reported by TV Licensing Blog we did not realise fully just how “arms length” and “hands off” the whole nasty business of BBC surveillance and enforcement had become. Now given the surveillance activities that they are used for most people would quite rightly assume that surveillance vehicles such as “detector vans” would be registered with some corporate or official entity. Not so. The incident has revealed that the Registered Keepers of these “detector vans” is neither the BBC nor Capita BBC TV Licensing™ but local managers employed by Capita BBC TV Licensing™ and registered to their home addresses. Which, to any sensible person, raises some very interesting chain of command, authorisation and equipment testing and calibration issues relating to the deployment of “detector vans” and whether they have been approved and signed off by the Surveillance Commissioner’s office.

Until the deployment of the “detector van” involved in the unpleasant incident reported by TV Licensing Blog we did not consider in detail the full public safety and health and safety issues of the deployment of “detector vans” and what a real hazard and risk to the general public deployment of “detector vans” poses and will continue to pose for as long as they are deployed. The high speed chase on the public highway of the “detector van” concerned is not the first that has been reported and we will venture that it will not be the last. Usually it’s the enforcement vehicle in pursuit of the alleged criminal. In this case it was the alleged “criminal” in pursuit of the “detector van” enforcement vehicle. The irony of that reversal is not lost on us and we suppose will not be lost on people who read this.

While not seeking to excuse the Legal Occupier who was in pursuit, the aggressive driving and risk taking by the driver of the “detector van” was well beyond any health and safety risk parameters. The following took place on the public highway; weaving the “detector van”, crossing the central white line, using the “detector van” as a moving obstacle, overtaking in the face of oncoming traffic, forcing oncoming drivers to take avoiding action, using the size of the “detector van” to intimidate an oncoming driver to make a hazardous reverse manoeuvre on a narrow country lane, using the “detector van” to inflict damage to the pursuing vehicle and finally leaving the scene of the collision without exchanging details with the other driver. If any of that is permitted and published in TV Licensing™ Visiting Procedures manual we would be obliged if someone from the BBC would be so kind as to point it out to us because we cannot find it.

Please bear in mind that this “detector van” parked outside someone’s home, deployed what the Legal Occupier believed was a wide lens camera, the driver took flight and drove off when confronted by the video camera equipped Legal Occupier, the Legal Occupier gave chase, the driver of the “detector van” decided to prolong the chase. The sum of which in the mind of any right thinking person raises very serious issues relating to the motor vehicle and public liability insurances taken out by Capita BBC TV Licensing™ and whether any claims arising from the risk taking driving behaviour of the “detector van” driver would have been honoured and indemnified by the insurers had innocent members of the public been killed, injured and had property damaged as a consequence of this incident. Luckily, on this occasion it was merely bent metal and broken plastic confined only to the vehicles involved. Alternatives involving death and injury of innocent bystanders just do not bear thinking about; . . . and for what?

Forget about what Capita BBC TV Licensing™ are going to do about it, as UK Television Licensing Authority we wonder exactly what the BBC are going to do about it. What the “detector van” driver did, we have to suppose, was done for the benefit of and on behalf of the BBC. The BBC are the public authority and therefore fully accountable for the actions of that “detector van” driver. The BBC acknowledges the fact that they are fully accountable by placing this in every freedom of Information response:

Please note that “TV Licensing” is a trade mark used by companies contracted by the BBC to administer the collection of television licence fees and enforcement of the television licensing system. The majority of the administration of TV Licensing is contracted to Capita Business Services Ltd (‘Capita’). Over-the-counter services are provided by PayPoint plc (‘PayPoint’) in the UK, and by the Post Office in the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. Marketing and printing services are contracted to Proximity London Ltd. Media services are contracted to Mediaedge:CIA International Limited ("MEC"). The BBC is a public authority in respect of its television licensing functions and retains overall responsibility.

So the BBC admit that they retain overall responsibility. In that case, we believe that the deployment of “detector vans” needs to be properly reviewed and more thoroughly risk assessed by the BBC. The UK and the people of the UK have moved on the BBC clearly have not. The age of respect and deference to public authority, any public authority, has long since vanished. Thanks to numerous scandals the BBC’s stock is at an all time low. If the BBC still thinks they can park their surveillance vehicles outside someone’s home, point optical equipment into the windows and get away with it then the BBC are clearly more out of touch than even we thought. Seemingly they will be in for some nasty “detector van” urban myth busting surprises as people increasingly get fed up of the BBC's intrusive surveillance. This is the beginning of an era of high technology assisted citizen activism, citizen journalism and video reportage in which angry and aggrieved camera equipped people do not think twice about going outside confronting officialdom and publishing what they record.

The BBC clearly needs to properly review and thoroughly risk assess what exactly the utility of “detector vans” is. What they allegedly “detect” cannot be used as evidence to bring prosecutions for alleged tv licence “evasion” so “detection evidence” is clearly non-existent. So that apart from alarmist “detector van” headlines “detector vans” serve no actual useful purpose, so what are they good for?.

So, the question is, are the BBC really going to continue placing the general public at risk whenever they authorise the deployment of surveillance vehicles that actually serve no useful evidence gathering surveillance purpose?

Over to the BBC and the BBC Trust. Hopefully they will still be sufficiently in touch with reality to deal with it properly. Though we among many others doubt it somehow.

"Family Killed in Head on Smash with Detector Van" or "Family Mown Down by Speeding Detector Van"- Be really great headlines wouldn't they BBC? How would the BBC explain them away? How could the BBC explain them away?

The value of domestic cctv surveillance and handheld video camera can prove invaluable in gathering evidence of the serial abuses and misdemeanours perpetrated by employees of Capita Business Services under cover of the BBC TV Licensing™ contract. TV Licensing Watch advises anybody who has the misfortune to have face to face dealings with Capita Business Services TV Licensing™ to make an audio-visual record of those dealings in their entirety covertly or overtly with cctv and handheld video cameras.

For people who have not exercised their right to remain silent, TV Licensing Watch advise anybody who has had the misfortune to have face to face dealings with Capita Business Services TV Licensing™ and have received a summons as a consequence to contact a licensed law practitioner if: there is the slightest discrepancy between the actual situation regarding viewing habits and/or what actually happened during the interview compared with what has been written on the TVL178 Record of Interview self incrimination form.

Sunday, 16 March 2014

Well, true to form, BBC’s main TV Licensing™ contractor, the outsourcing industry's equivalent of Mr Carker, the ever "creative" Capita Business Services seem to have been up to some rules bending chicanery on behalf of their ever money hungry BBC paymasters.

June 25 2013 was a notable date. It was the date when the notorious TV Dealer Notification to TV Licensing™ ceased. Fellow blogger TV Licensing Blog published a very interesting and informative blogpost about it. The TV Dealer Notification scheme was the primary means by which retailers grassed up their loyal customers’ names and addresses when they purchased TVs and other potentially “licensable” (including no licence needed DVD players, etc, etc) consumer electronics goodies like VCRs and DVDRs to Capita BBC TV Licensing™.

Customers whose addresses were “not properly licensed” (sic) would some time later receive a kindly missive from Capita BBC TV Licensing™ citing that they had been grassed on by the retailer concerned whom they had so kindly patronised, that they parted with the money, had the goodies and now was the time they had better cough up for a TV licence or they would “send the boys round” for a contribution to the BBC TV access tax scam and, by the way, bend over and get shafted by giving us a prosecution statement so you can be stitched up and prosecuted 6 months later.

Well the means of reporting ceased on 25 June 2013. So naturally, the BBC being the BBC and Capita BBC TV Licensing™ being . . . well anyway we wondered how long it was going to be before we and others started getting reports that the cessation of the TV Dealer Notification scheme had been successfully substituted with another little data harvesting scam that neatly circumvents the cessation of the flow of grassing on people data from retailers filling out a multipart NCR book. Sure enough the reports have started coming in.

TV Licensing Blog has been active in the matter, naming and shaming retailers who have continued to supply TV Dealer Notification data to Capita BBC TV Licensing™ via the multipart NCR book since 25 June 2013. Many retailers claimed that they only did so for “post sale warranty purposes”. We among others find that considerably less than credible. When approached on the subject most staff did not know the TV Dealer Notification scheme had ended. However, having been completed unlawfully with customer data that Capita BBC TV Licensing™ could not lawfully use, supplies of the multipart NCR TV Dealer Notification book seem to have dried up even though they should have long since been destroyed. So according to reports what seems to be happening now is that retailers are notifying Capita BBC TV Licensing™ of the names and addresses of customers from the various payment cards used in the transactions. And of course, those addresses harvested from the payment cards which are not “properly licensed”(sic) have been getting the aforementioned threatening missives from Capita BBC TV Licensing™.

Perusal of the rules published by the UK Cards Association and UK Payments Administration shows that the names and addresses of payment card users may be passed on to certain organisations purely “on a need to know” basis. So what Capita BBC TV Licensing™ seem to be doing is alright then? Seemingly. However, if the reports are true and we have no reason to disbelieve them, when people think about it there is one small problem in the data harvesting payment card transactions the way Capita BBC TV Licensing™ seem to be doing. Apart from the multitude of lawful uses for unlicensed televisions and audio-visual equipment, what is that? Careful reading of the text on the thumbnail images makes it obvious.

The BBC's and Capita TV Licensing™'s “on a need to know” basis published by the UK Cards Association and UK Payments Administration arguably ceased when the TV Dealer Notification scheme ceased last year on 25 June 2013. We foresee more than a few angry, aggrieved people in receipt of those threatening missives from Capita BBC TV Licensing™ as a consequence of their payment card transactions lodging complaints to the Information Commissioner's Office about this.

The value of domestic cctv surveillance and handheld video camera can prove invaluable in gathering evidence of the serial abuses and misdemeanours perpetrated by employees of Capita Business Services under cover of the BBC TV Licensing™ contract. TV Licensing Watch advises anybody who has the misfortune to have face to face dealings with Capita Business Services TV Licensing™ to make an audio-visual record of those dealings in their entirety covertly or overtly with cctv and handheld video cameras.

For people who have not exercised their right to remain silent, TV Licensing Watch advise anybody who has had the misfortune to have face to face dealings with Capita Business Services TV Licensing™ and have received a summons as a consequence to contact a licensed law practitioner if: there is the slightest discrepancy between the actual situation regarding viewing habits and/or what actually happened during the interview compared with what has been written on the TVL178 Record of Interview self incrimination form.

Friday, 14 March 2014

Announcements from the UK Parliament about the proposed decriminalisation of so-called TV licence “evasion” has been a news item in the various media recently. Many readers would think that TV Licensing Watch would welcome such announcements from the UK Parliament. Unfortunately we do not. The first thing which drew our attention in the announcements from the UK Parliament was the main reason given for the proposed decriminalisation of TV licence "evasion". Namely, "to stop the clogging up of courts" by tv licence evasion prosecutions brought by BBC main TV Licensing™ contractor Capita BBC TV Licensing. In 2012 alone, 193,049 prosecutions yielding 164,932 convictions in courts of England and Wales according to the Ministry of Justice. TV Licensing Watch are not bothered in the least whether the courts of England and Wales are clogged up with tv licence "evasion" prosecutions. TV Licensing Watch are more bothered about the victims of the BBC and Capita BBC TV Licensing and the enforcement abuses that lead to prosecutions and more importantly that the "crime" of tv licence "evasion" even exists at all to be a prosecutable "offence". We believe that the UK Parliament would serve the interests of the UK electorate a hell of a lot better by being more concerned about those than whether the courts are clogged up by Capita BBC TV Licensing prosecutions brought on behalf of the BBC.

Until the day he died, John Reith, first Director General of the BBC, believed the introduction of radio licensing and then television licensing were serious mistakes. He did not understand why people who did not and do not want to fund the BBC should ever have been subjected to investigation, enforcement and penalty. The British Broadcasting Corporation started out as the British Broadcasting Company. A notable feature of the British Broadcasting Company was that it was subscription funded. Subscription funding is the very inevitability that the British Broadcasting Corporation is currently fighting to delay. This is ironic since that is how its predecessor British Broadcasting Company was funded and subscription is also a very successful funding model for Sky and other television programme and media service providers. The dispute between John Reith and the Postmaster General at the time regarding subscription(Reith) versus licence fee(Postmaster General) and its outcome is a matter of historical record.

TV Licensing Watch has little difficulty in fully agreeing with John Reith. We do not understand why people who do not want to fund the BBC are subject to or ever should have been subjected to investigation, enforcement and penalty.

TV Licensing Watch have never seen or heard anything from our detractors, the BBC and its supporters that could or does properly explain and justify why people who do not want to fund the BBC are subject to or ever should have been subjected to investigation, enforcement and penalty.

TV Licensing Watch believe that people should have the freedom to choose not to fund the BBC if they so wish without being subjected to investigation, enforcement and penalty.

TV Licensing Watch believe that any form of enforced live television broadcast receiving licence should simply be abolished at the termination of the current BBC Charter and replaced not with a media licence but with voluntary subscription.

TV Licensing Watch wants to bring to the earliest possible end:

“Please note that “TV Licensing” is a trade mark used by companies contracted by the BBC to administer the collection of television licence fees and enforcement of the television licensing system. “

TV Licensing Watch does not believe that TV licence decriminalisation is sufficient to address and deal with the fundamental problems and enforcement abuses of the current TV licensing regime. Further, TV licence decriminalisation opens up the prospect of new and modified enforcement abuses and abusers when the inclusion of debt collector and bailiff terrorism are taken into account. We believe that the UK Parliament have badly misjudged the proposed TV licence decriminalisation so TV Licensing Watch urged the UK Parliament that television licence abolition is the only moral, social, economic, political, just, and acceptable objective to eliminate television licensing enforcement practises and procedures that have become so debased and corrupted that they are beyond redemption and reform.

The value of domestic cctv surveillance and handheld video camera can prove invaluable in gathering evidence of the serial abuses and misdemeanours perpetrated by employees of Capita Business Services under cover of the BBC TV Licensing™ contract. TV Licensing Watch advises anybody who has the misfortune to have face to face dealings with Capita Business Services TV Licensing™ to make an audio-visual record of those dealings in their entirety covertly or overtly with cctv and handheld video cameras.

For people who have not exercised their right to remain silent, TV Licensing Watch advise anybody who has had the misfortune to have face to face dealings with Capita Business Services TV Licensing™ and have received a summons as a consequence to contact a licensed law practitioner if: there is the slightest discrepancy between the actual situation regarding viewing habits and/or what actually happened during the interview compared with what has been written on the TVL178 Record of Interview self incrimination form.